Emanations (episode)
Investigating mineral deposits on an asteroid, Harry Kim is trapped on an alien planet. Summary While investigating a new element, the 247th one known to the Federation, on a ring of asteroids around a planet, Chakotay, Torres, and Kim discover numerous decaying bodies. A subspace vacuole forms, and Chakotay requests an emergency beam out. Aboard , Chakotay and Torres materialize ... with a dead body. Meanwhile, Kim has been transported to the Vhnori homeworld. There he learns that when the residents are near death, they are placed in a coffin-like device which euthanizes the occupant, then transports them to the "Next Emanation," their culture's concept of Heaven or nirvana. In trying to explain where he comes from, he introduces doubt and suspicion about their beliefs. Aboard Voyager, the Vhnori corpse is determined to have died within the last few minutes, and within reach of medical resuscitation. The Doctor removes her brain tumor, replicates replacement neural tissue, and then revives the woman. She is disoriented and upset, as she died fully expecting to wake in the next emanation, and be reunited with her brother. The Doctor has to sedate her. Back on Vhnori, a leading thanatologist, Neria, questions Kim, and provides him with further information on their beliefs. Kim's presence disturbs the plans of Hatil Garan, whose family has convinced him that it is time to be sent to the Next Emanation. On Vhnori, Kim is told, everyone does this willingly — when they're sick, dying, lonely. In Hatil's case, his family has urged him to make the decision. With Kim's arrival, he begins to have doubts. On Voyager, an attempt to send the woman, Ptera, back to Vhnori fails. In close to proximity to the planet, more Vhnori corpses start materializing on the engineering deck, probably attracted by the warp core. Torres enacted safeguards, but hopes of getting Kim back dwindle. The bodies continue to appear, and the transporter room beams each body to the asteroids one by one. On Vhnori, Neria intends to move Kim to another location for further medical analysis, threatening Kim's hopes of returning to Voyager. Kim convinces Hatil to let him take his place in the device, while the Vhnori man flees to the mountains, letting his family believe him dead. Inside the device, Kim dies and is transported to Voyager, where sensors detect him. Immediately beamed to sickbay, Kim is revived by The Doctor with a dose of cordrazine. Though it appeared to Kim that the Vhnori don't ascend to the Next Emanation, Torres determined that the Voyager sensors were detecting slight energy emissions from the newly appearing bodies, adding to a complex and dynamic energy field that inundated the asteroid field — a possible indication of the next emanation. On the mess deck, Captain Janeway catches up with Kim, and orders him off duty for a couple of days to put his recent adventure in perspective. He resists, but she tells him that it is too easy in Starfleet to just carry on, and objectify each new, "extraordinary experience" as all in a day's work. She urges him to take the time to appreciate what he's been through. Log Entries *''Captain's log, stardate 48623.5. There are two-hundred-forty-six elements known to Federation science. We believe we have just discovered the two-hundred-forty-seventh inside the ring system of a class-D planet. '' *''Captain's log, supplemental. We've returned to the ring system, and we're preparing to send Ptera back to her dimension. Lieutenant Torres has found a way to temporarily protect the warp core against the vacuoles, but she is uncertain how long her measures will be effective. '' Memorable Quotes "I just want to give you a chance to reflect on what's happened. This may not make much sense to you now, a young man at the beginning of his career. But one of the things you'll learn as you move up the ranks and get a little older is that... you wish you had more time in your youth to really, absorb all the things that happened to you. It goes by so fast. It's so easy to become jaded, to treat the extraordinary like just another day at the office. But sometimes there are experiences which transcend all that. You've just had one, Mr. Kim, and I want you to live with it for a little while. Write about it, if you feel like it. Paint. Express yourself in some fashion. The Bridge will still be there in two days." : - Janeway to Harry Kim "Ptera, you've been through a ''very traumatic experience. It would frighten me." : - '''Janeway', to Ptera, after she was brought back from death "I don't know who you are or where you come from, but you stay away from my husband!" : - Loria, to Harry Kim "No artifacts, no inscriptions... just some naked dead people." : - B'Elanna Torres, while exploring an asteroid with Vhnori corpses "The fact that they're naked says a lot. It means this race doesn't believe in dressing the deceased." : - Chakotay "Sometimes I come in here and just stare out at the stars for hours. I never get tired of looking at them." : - Kes "I'm not certain, but I am certain about this. What we don't know about death is far, far greater than what we do know." : - Captain Janeway Background Information Story and Script * The genesis of this story began years earlier. Brannon Braga (who had worked as a writer/producer on Star Trek: The Next Generation before joining Star Trek: Voyager) explained, "I had wanted to do a show about death ever since I came to ''Star Trek, but I could never find a way to do it." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 48) Executive producer Jeri Taylor recalled, "''It was episode that Brannon really felt strongly about and he, being consumed with dark things, wrote the script." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * The philosophical and political issues that were central to the story extremely interested Brannon Braga. Of the direction he took the story in, Braga commented, " Our reality as an alien afterlife' was a catchy, high-concept SF idea that ended up affording very interesting philosophical explorations, namely, what is life, could something really lie beyond, and a great deal of social commentary about euthanasia. I really tried to emphasize some of the euthanasia issues, that in a society where they know an afterlife exists because it's a scientific fact, some people would be eager to die. Sick people would be encouraged to die, and you start getting into some very tricky issues. Once euthanasia is approved, does the person who's 'deciding' really have a choice? There's so much pressure on that person to go to the next emanation that really there is ''no choice, and those are some of the things I was trying to say. I don't believe in euthanasia. I don't believe it's fair to say to someone who's sick, 'You may pull the plug,' because there are lots of pressures. What about the people who can't afford the medical treatment? A lot of guilt comes from making your family pay for all of it. So, I think there are some unseen pressures which accompany that choice that I really wanted to explore." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, p. 48) * Braga's initial attempt to encapsulate the story was not entirely successful. He stated, "''I wrote a first draft that I thought was one of my best scripts .... I got a lot of notes and did rewrites I wasn't happy to do, but in the end they were right and I was wrong." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Jeri Taylor recalled, "It was a very tricky episode to do .... It was very tricky in the beginning. He got so involved with the political debate that the story and the people sort of got lost, but I thought he addressed that very nicely." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * One issue that the writing staff encountered was that Brannon Braga and executive producer Michael Piller had creative differences over how intellectual to make the script, with Braga wanting the episode to be more "brooding and philosophical" but his boss insisting that the story involve more active conflict. Braga also felt that the story suffered, as a result of this disagreement. (Star Trek Monthly issue 7) * Brannon Braga tried to imbue Voyager crew members with likable qualities, in scenes such as the early one wherein Chakotay expresses sensitivity to the rituals of other cultures and the penultimate scene, in which Janeway advises Kim to take some time to consider his recent experiences. Of the early scene, Braga remarked, "I thought it would be nice to show that this is a crew that has a lot of respect for alien cultures. To the point where they are not going to muss with anything. Certainly, that whole scene on the asteroid where they are discovering the bodies was an attempt to give Chakotay some character, to show that he's an expert in paleontological events... and that he's really smart." Braga continued by saying of the later scene between Janeway and Kim, "The moment at the end was a definite attempt to show a Captain who takes the time to appeal to the human equation in all of this. She tells Kim to take some time off to think about–and in fact, encourages him to seek a creative outlet. It would be nice to see some of our crew members actually engage in some sort of artistic endeavor." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 47) * Anticipating that close-up shots of the ringed planet in this episode would be prohibitively expensive, Voyager s team of writer-producers initially wrote around the asteroid sequence. David Stipes, the visual effects supervisor on this episode, explained, "We were initially going to see a ring at a distance, so it looks like a Saturn-like planet, then we were going to go into a graphic that shows the asteroids, and then we were going to talk about them. We were not going to see them. That was to cut the budget." Stipes justified the cost due to his passion for the episode's story and script, however. "The producers were absolutely right that under a conventional approach we could not have done this show. Those kind of shots tend to be very expensive. You have so many different components to layer in together–all these asteroids, the planet, and the ship–that it just becomes a lot more involved than just a ship over stars," Stipes acknowledged. "But I got very excited about this particular script. I liked the idea of the afterlife, of going on to a different lifetime, and was very intrigued by the impact that Harry Kim was having on the other race .... It was wonderful." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 47) * One sequence that was considered to be too expensive to produce was a certain visual perspective that Brannon Braga wanted to include in the story. "My biggest regret," he conceded, "was that I had written a whole sequence where, when Kim dies, we follow his point-of-view. It was my contention that how often do we literally get to kill a character and see his point-of-view of death? And in an episode where the only thing being discussed on both sides is death–''let's see it! Well, for budgetary reasons, we couldn't do it, and for me, that was devastating. The show was crippled by the fact that we didn't follow Kim's point-of-view of death. Even if it had been nothing more than a light show, it would have been really neat. When that rod sticks into his neck, we should have seen his point-of-view." (The Official Star Trek: Voyager Magazine, issue #5, pages 48 & 49) * Braga was ultimately pleased, however, with the episode's exploration of intellectual matters. He commented, "''It is certainly one of my best concepts. Our reality being somebody else's afterlife and one of our people coming back from the dead in return for an alien was a good idea, solid sci fi, and an issue explored. My shows don't always deal with issues, but this one deals with issues of euthanasia." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Ultimately, Braga's fellow writer/producers approved of the story and Jeri Taylor, in particular, believed that Braga had figuratively poured his heart and soul into the episode's teleplay. She remarked, "The concept that our life is their afterlife was a very high-concept sci-fi notion, which I think is part of the best things that ''Star Trek does." Taylor also stated, "''Ultimately, it was an episode about something, and it was thought-provoking." Stated story editor Kenneth Biller, "A great notion and a notion that delivered on the promise of the series, which is weird stuff in a weird place far from home." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * One aspect of the episode that science consultant André Bormanis enjoyed was the inclusion of the planet's ring system. He explained, "Ring systems are typically comprised of relatively small to fairly large, rocky pieces of debris. Ice sometimes is associated with this debris .... In our show 'Emanations,' we decided that the rings of an alien gas giant planet would be a fun setting for this story, which was ultimately a story about religious beliefs and the afterlife. And so, we were able to bring ''Voyager into this ring system and show those chunks of rock and ice and get Voyager into orbit with that material. That was a lot of fun." (''Real Science With Andre Bormanis, VOY Season 2 DVD special features) * There were, at least in the opinions of several people, certain downsides to the episode's final permutation, however. Piller, for example, still felt that the episode should have contained more drama and conflict. He commented, "I always felt that it was more philosophical than dramatic. I don't think it quite realized its potential .... The show had a great deal of potential and was philosophically fascinating, but there's just too much conversation about philosophy, and it didn't have a strong enough character arc for my tastes." Jeri Taylor noted, "I think that maybe some of what we saw of the other life was somewhat disappointing." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Some people also felt that the aliens' belief in an afterlife was too spiritual for Star Trek but Brannon Braga disagreed, noting that the concept was embodied in a specifically alien culture. (Star Trek Monthly issue 7) * This episode was the first of Star Trek: Voyager to have five acts (rather than eight or four) and was one of the most affected by act formatting changes, specifically the decision – made in the first week of January – to return to the idea of regular episodes each having five acts rather than four. The necessary adjustments were made to the episode's script by Lolita Fatjo and Janet Nemecek. (A Vision of the Future - Star Trek: Voyager, p. 345) Cast and Characters * Regarding Harry Kim's experiences in this episode, Kenneth Biller remarked, "Just the whole notion of somebody waking up in the middle of an alien funeral, realizing that we come from some other culture's afterlife is really fascinating, and it was a great personal story for Kim. It's about death and it's about a guy who has to be willing to take the plunge – be willing to die – to live again. Wonderful stuff." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * At about the end of the first season, Kim actor Garrett Wang remarked on having been more active in this episode than usual: "Whenever they need a reaction shot of somebody being amazed by something they go to Harry Kim. As the seasons go on, I'm sure that they will add more depth and more color to my character. In fact, in the episode 'Emanations' I actually died and came back to life." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages, p. 125) In a retrospective interview, Wang noted, "Kim was actually the first character to die and then come back to life." (Voyager Time Capsule: Harry Kim, VOY Season 4 DVD special features) Wang believed the episode was an important step in Kim's maturation. The actor remarked, "The bottom line is, in order to get back, he has to commit suicide. He has to die in order to live. And the fact that he made that decision and went through with it and came out okay shows that Harry is less green at that point. He still has his innocent side, but he also has a little more maturity." (Star Trek: Communicator, issue #102, p. 46) * Garrett Wang also found this episode to be particularly challenging. He revealed, " Emanations' was particularly trying on me. The seven or eight days of shooting were tough because as actors, we play parts where a character is dying but not where a character dies and comes back to life, which is very difficult because there's no precedent to that in one's life experience." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Wang employed several methods to perform Kim's death and resurrection. The actor recalled, "When I was pretending to be dead, I concentrated on trying to slow my heartbeat down and on physical things and manifestations. When I was young and on my martial-arts kick, I would read about ninjas who are going to attack and people won't know it because they've sucked in their aura. That's what I tried to do. It was interesting because David [Livingston] left up to me when I actually came back to life after I was injected with the hypospray. He said, 'Choose when is the time that it will affect you and jump-start you back.' And so when I did come back I took in this big breath and had goose bumps all over me." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Jeri Taylor admitted, "I think some of the aliens on the other side were a little hokey." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Jeffrey Alan Chandler (Hatil Garan) later played the Trill Guardian in the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine episode . * Jerry Hardin (Neria) previously played Radue in , as well as Samuel Clemens in and . * Ethan Phillips (Neelix) does not appear in this episode. Production * The Vhnori interiors were all redresses of interiors designed for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, which shared soundstage space with Star Trek: Voyager. The lab where Kim speaks privately with Hatil Garan is actually the space in the second level of the Promenade set outside Quark's bar. Some of the wall panels in the Vhnori rooms were mouldings left over from the Deep Space Nine sets. (Delta Quadrant, p. 30) * Director David Livingston was suffering with the flu while filming this episode. (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * During the episode's production period, Livingston was slightly unsure how to differentiate scenes set on the Vhnori homeworld to the series' regular settings. "I said to Jeri Taylor that I had to do something different and the only thing I could come up with was to dutch the camera," Livingston admitted, in regard to directing the episode and presenting its alien afterlife milieu on a skewed camera angle. "They all threw up their hands because I did that in DS9's 'Crossover' and took a lot of shit for it. I said it was the only thing I could think of to do visually that would make it different. Rick [Berman] didn't want me to do it, and Jeri finally agreed, and eventually Rick did too, but they didn't want me to go too far overboard with it. I didn't do it as much as I wanted, but I did it enough so that you have a sense that things look slightly unbalanced and skewed." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * With hindsight, Livingston stated, "I wanted the mood of the Other Side to be much darker and the sets to be weirder and stuff, but time and everything conspire against you. I initially wanted everything bright in the emanation room where they're waiting to die, and it was a mistake on my part. It should have been much moodier and darker and weirder. If I have any regrets, it's that." (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) * Jeri Taylor also criticized some of the episode's production elements, saying that she had "some quibbles" about them. (Captains' Logs Supplemental - The Unauthorized Guide to the New Trek Voyages) Effects * David Stipes had to campaign for the visual effects of this episode to include adequately close shots of the ringed planet. He was inspired by the design of Voyager s opening credits sequence. "I think effects producer Dan Curry and the guys at Santa Barbara Studios held out a promise for the show in the title sequence," Stipes remarked. "I try to adhere to the mood it established. The title sequence was part of the inspiration and the thrust for the 'Emanations' show–the scale of the planet, the planetoids, the asteroids, and the rings, all of those things." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 85) designed, in order to convince producers to authorize use of CGI in this episode]] * Stipes first met with the staff of Amblin Imaging and explained his aspiration of achieving, on a modest budget, an epic vision for these shots. As Voyager had already been rendered in CGI, the shots were within the realm of possibility. In fact, Stipes originally planned to matte footage of the studio model into the planetary scenes but, after he saw the CGI ship, he saw no reason to shoot motion control footage for the shots and abandoned this idea. He thereafter presented his case to the producers. "I'm saying, 'Guys we've got to see this, " Stipes recalled. "I brought in storyboards to show them. I talked with David Livingston who was the director and he was very supportive, talked with Jeri Taylor and she said, 'If you can do it for the budget we have, then fine let's do it.' And producer Peter Lauritson was tremendously supportive." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 84) * The episode's final version includes five shots showing the ring system and three stock shots of Voyager alone in space. The design and execution of the shots required contributions from many different people. For example, although the shots involving the ringed planet were designed by David Stipes, Peter Lauritson also helped with the design. Stipes noted, "He made some suggestions on how to rearrange some of the shots." Executing the shots subsequently drew on the combined skills of Amblin's entire staff. Grant Bouchet, one of two CGI supervisors at Amblin (the other being John Gross), remarked, "One thing on 'Emanations' we are particularly proud of is that everybody was involved. All of us finessed motion, lighting, texture maps, planets. We all had a hand in every single shot." One major contributor was David Jones. John Gross commented, "One of our animators, David Jones, worked full time on getting that planet to look like David Stipes wanted it to look." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, pages 84 & 85) * Creating the look of the planet began with a standard sphere, a pre-existing part of the Lightwave software. For surface detail, a satellite photograph of Nevada was scanned, manipulated with use of the image processing program Adobe Photo Shop, then digitally wrapped around the sphere. With the planet surface complete, two more spheres were created around it to represent the atmosphere and cloud layers. The stars around the planet, at least some of which had originally been created for the film trailer for , were a variety of light points set at different distances within an extremely large sphere. (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 85) * The planet's rings can most closely be seen in one of the five planetary shots that follows Voyager from a stationary position in front of the orbiting asteroids through a 180 degree pan, sweeping past the planet and its rings to a point where the ship warps away from the area. This shot was achieved entirely with the Lightwave digital modeling program. The planet's distant rings were a matte painting created by David Jones. However, the debris shown as being closer to the camera was rendered with the Lightwave program. "As we get closer and closer the rings are created using a particle system in Lightwave," Gross explained. "We apply a bump map to it to make it bumpy. Closer still we break off into the big chunks." Grant Bouchet commented, "At this point it was handed to me for throwing in the asteroids. In the distance we had a layer of very fine transparent particles, then the layer closer to us of a whole bunch of little bitty distorted spheres, thousands of them. These are not very complicated whatsoever, but when the light hits them you get these little highlights. Again the computer is doing all that work for you. The next layer up are medium size asteroids and they have a low level of detail. David hand-painted a matte of a rocky, bumpy surface. Then we used Lightwave's spherical mapping algorithm to apply that around the asteroids." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 85) * With the background complete, the Amblin staff inserted the CGI Voyager into the shots. The final movement of the particular shot wherein the ship departs the planet was programmed by John Gross, after which the team concentrated on finessing the shot. Two lighting methods were tried out. Voyager was back lit in the first lighting scenario but front lit in the second, the second example giving the ship an attractive painted look at the start of the shot but making the vessel almost completely blackened out by the end. Stipes ultimately decided upon the first lighting method. "Then it was a matter of further fine-tuning lighting," Bouchet recalled. "Each element is lit from about the same direction, but at just a little different angle, maybe five degrees here or there." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 85) * Ultimately, both David Stipes and André Bormanis considered this episode to be the high point for visual effects in Voyager s first season. Bormanis said of the ringed planet, "I think that was one of the 'cutting edge' special effects that we had done on ''Voyager. Certainly, on television at that time, there was nothing else like it. And at that time, for us, that was really pushing the state of the art of the kinds of special effects we could do on the show." (''Real Science With Andre Bormanis, VOY Season 2 DVD special features) For his part, Stipes enthused, "Here was this wonderful concept, a tremendously great script, and we were able to reflect what was in the script by bringing some of that flavor to the show visually. Because of the foresight of the producers having created a CGI ship, we were able to come in and deliver shots that up to now we couldn't have afforded to do. I'm not sure people at Paramount realize it, but this show would not have been possible a year ago." (Cinefantastique, Vol. 27, No. 4/5, page 85) Continuity & Trivia * This is the first time Harry Kim dies on Voyager. The next instance is during the episode . * Voyager s crew discovers the first stable transuranic element, element 247; we learn here that the Federation previously knew of 246 elements and, since Voyager discovers a new element in this episode, that number is raised to 247. By comparison, there were merely 111 elements known to science when the episode first aired, with the 111th of these discovered only a few days before the episode's initial broadcast(specifically, on 8 December 1994). First Airing & Reception * Garrett Wang would have preferred if this episode had been broadcast later in the first season than it actually had been. "In terms of airing that episode," he said, "it would have been nice to have it closer to the end instead of near the beginning. Think about it: this is a life-changing event, and maybe it would have been a smarter move to put this episode towards the end so Kim comes into the second season a wiser soul. Because it was placed closer to the beginning, I had a tough time trying to keep my 'green around the gills' image." (Star Trek Monthly issue 19) * This is one of four episodes (the others being from Star Trek: The Next Generation) that, in , were singled out at the Society for American Archeology annual meeting in New Orleans, at which Voyager and TNG received The Public Education Recognition Award. (Star Trek Monthly issue 19) Video and DVD releases *UK VHS release (two-episode tapes, CIC Video): Volume 1.5, catalogue number VHR 4005, . *As part of the VOY Season 1 DVD collection. Links and References Main Cast *Kate Mulgrew as Captain Kathryn Janeway *Robert Beltran as Commander Chakotay *Roxann Biggs-Dawson as Lieutenant B'Elanna Torres *Jennifer Lien as Kes *Robert Duncan McNeill as Lieutenant Tom Paris *Robert Picardo as The Doctor *Tim Russ as Lieutenant Tuvok *Garrett Wang as Ensign Harry Kim Guest Stars *Jerry Hardin as Neria *Jefrey Alan Chandler as Hatil Garan *Cecile Callan as Ptera *Martha Hackett as Seska *Robin Groves as Loria Co-Star *John Cirigliano as Alien #1 Uncredited Co-Stars *David Clover as Cenotaph attendant *Audrey Gelfund as Ptera's mourner *Holiday Freeman as Ptera's mourner *Alta McGovern as Hatil's mourner *Richard Sarstedt as Crewman William McKenzie *Simon Stotler as an operations division ensign *John Tampoya as Crewman Kashimuro Nozawa *Chad Valchar as Hatil's mourner *Unknown performers as **Ptera's mourner **Vhnori ceremony assistant **Vhnori corpses Uncredited Stand-ins *Sue Henley as stand-in for Kate Mulgrew *John Tampoya as body double for Garrett Wang References 47, bioscan, blind beam-out, Cararian Mountains, cenotaph, class D, class 5 humanoid, comra, cordrazine, element 247, garili tree, Ktaria VII, Ktarian, magnetic interlock, morgue; netinaline, Next Emanation, nucleon; Ocampa, Paffran, subspace vacuole, thanatologist, Vhnori |next= }} de:Das Unvorstellbare es:Emanations fr:Emanations nl:Emanations Category:VOY episodes